ABSTRACT
Objective To understand the frequency distribution of causes to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of chronic cough.Methods Patients were recruited according to the inclusion criteria:chronic cough more than 8 weeks;normal X-ray appearance;coughing symptoms as the main or only symptom.Disease history was referred and physical examination was conducted,according to the diagnosis criteria of chronic cough causeoriented processes.If laboratory examination results are missing for a patient,empirical treatment will be combined as a treatment for this patient.Finally,the curative effect and the cause of disease will be analyzed.Results Seventy-nine patients were followed up.Twenty-eight,12,22,10,and 7 patients respectively were suspected of having CVA,EB,UACS,AC and GERC,among whom,23,9,14,9 and 4 were confirmed for their diagnosis,and 84.1％,75.0％,63.6％,90.0％,and 57.1％ of them received effective targeted therapies,accounting for 29.1％,11.4％,24.1％,11.4％,and 6.3％ respectively of all patients.The overall response rate was 74.7％.Conclusion The diagnosis and treatment of chronic cough with combinational cause-oriented diagnostic process and empirical therapy produce high effective rate with low cost.In addition,it could help understand the local frequency distribution of causes of chronic cough.It may be worth wide clinical application.
